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Be to Drop BeOS? No.
MrChris2 writes "Found this over on benews, it seems that Be have decided that Microsoft dominate the desktop market too throughly, and have decided to withdraw from the field. There will be several more updates to the BeOS, but eventaully they will fold it into an Internet Appliance only OS." I called Be Europe this morning to confirm this, and it's just not true. I spoke to Jean Calmon at Be, who feels that the interview with Lamar Potts was taken a little out of context. Jean informed me that while a large amount of the engineering firepower at Be is being directed at BeIA and the 'internet appliance' angle, there are no plans to stop supporting or updating the BeOS. Gosh, this sounds like NeXT, doesn't it?
I'm glad to hear that BeOS is not quite beaten yet, though. They have a wonderful product, and if it weren't for the lack of vendor support (which is partially Microsoft's fault), I'd probably be using it right now.
How many other systems come with apps that give you haiku error messages? Now that's just cool...
Got Rhinos?
for the dangerously small 3rd party developer community. Yikes.
If Be gets some deals set that puts their tech in a few million set-top boxes, there's really not going to be much motivation from their standpoint to continue supporting a standalone OS, especially when it's now being given away for free and there's not a lot of people using it anyway (support market).
Perhaps the curse of having a very stable, easy to use OS? (small/weak support/services market when going the "free" model).
Perhaps they could keep Be Free, by introducing a lot of bloat/bugs in future revisions of the OS, thus causing paid support business to take off. Hmm.
Perhaps they could just market a $15,000 version with some nice hardware as an "Avid Killer".
Isn't it obvious? Be is down financially, AOL has all the components it needs to be Windows free, except an OS. Yeah, they could go with Linux, but AOL has always tried to remain proprietary. Be will give them a foray into internet appliances (think set-top boxes and web-pads), has the multimedia capabilities that AOL craves (think AOLTV) and will tie-in beautifully with Mozilla.
;-)...
It just makes sense. I am starting this rumor right now
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
..if it's at all true. I think it's unfortunate that BeOS, which is a fairly nifty OS in its own right, can't compete in this marketplace.. Apple's closed hardware is really taking away from their chances.
:)
With the breadth of PC hardware out there, it's very difficult to support everything (as evidenced by Microsoft's inability to make a 100% stable OS). If Be were able to produce BeOS for G3/G4 hardware, which is much easier to support, they'd be able to compete with Apple on their own ground -- video editing, desktop publishing, sound, and general multimedia apps.
Obviously, this is less than appealing to Apple, but unfortunate nonetheless
I hope more of the BeOS gets open sourced -- Be shouldn't let it die like NeXT did.
-s
---- noi non potemo aver perfetta vita senza amici -- Dante
If Be were to be really like NEXT then Be advocates have nothing to worry about. After all, look what happened to NEXT. Corporately they were bought out but technologically, NEXT's OS memes dominate the new Apple. What is Cocoa if not NextStep?
From a Forbes perspective, NEXT lost. From a true nerd perspective, NEXT won all that counted. I hope the ending of the Be story turns out as happy.
DB
This makes sense, though it's a bit sad. Looks like marketing wins the product race, not tech.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I am not a Be person, so my information may be flawed or even *GASP* wrong.
1) Be does not have a large amount of manpower. They had barely enough to keep BeOS going and slowly keep up with driver support and software support all at the same time.
2) BeIA is more important to Be as a company and therefore more of it's resources will be working on BeIA (and not BeOS).
With those two issues stated, I submit that BeOS is turning into a bastard stepchild. Be will give it enough resources to appear alive, but in the end, it will never receive the attention it needs to really make a difference to anyone. I am NOT happy with this situation. If Be won't take care of BeOS, then let someone else. Why not Open Source the thing and spend a little effort to help nurture it out into the Open Source world? I think that everyone could benefit from a very workstation oriented, open OS. Even Be.
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
> "Believe half of what you read and none of what you hear."
And the opposite of anything you read in a newsgroup.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I see nothing about the future of the BeOS market to suggest that it will be a lucrative market for developers. Its focus on the multimedia market is nothing but backpedalling. They might as well make a solid run at the appliance market - the desktop market is spoken for. The Mac and linux suitably fills in the small cracks that windows doesn't address - the remaining market share is too small to bother trying to make a profit off of.
How could anyone imagine that it isn't safe to compete in the same space as Microsoft?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Having used most OSes known to man at some time or another, I can sincerely say that BeOS is the most *comfortable* OS for the desktop. Its user interface just feels natural and easy to use.
I'll agree that BeOS is not for everything or everyone. Linux, FreeBSD, and the free Unices are by far superior on the backend, whereas BeOS network performance, features, and support are, for lack of a better word crappy at the moment. Be was meant for the desktop. M$ still has the corner market on games, but BeOS is coming out with some great ones, including Worms: Armaggeddon.
BeOS is designed to be "The Media OS" and now it is beginning to live up to it's claims with the new features and media support that has been introduced in R5. Several things still need to be done for BeOS to become a M$ killer on the desktop:
More media support (increased codecs, file translators, etc.)
UDF and DVD movie support
Increased device driver support
Better browsers (can we say Bezilla?)
Mainstream applications (we're halfway there)
More interested programmers
Eventually, with the continued help of everyone, BeOS will become a truly competitive OS of it's own right.
If you are a programmer and are interested in developing for the BeOS, have innovative ideas, or just would like to help, email me [carlos.noguera@millersville.edu] and visit the BeUnited website.
Man, I hope Be keeps enough resource on BeOS. They're almost at the point of being a solid alternative for music and multimedia applications, something which Windows ain't. I would hate to see them stick it out this far and then not put enough muscle behind the last 10ft of the race.
By the way, has any company that has decided to focus on embedded applications or OSes ever been successful? I saw so many of those "thin client" type focus announcements, and then usually the company just implodes.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The BeOS was originally part of a package called a BeBox. I have one. It is holding up some books right now. It has 2 133mhz PowerPC 603 processors, midi in and out, a slew of serial ports, scsi, infra red ports, a GEEK port which has a bunch of DAC and ADC on one standard port. It was very quick when we got it. It took me months to get my developer software. But that was ok. We didn't have much in the way of docs for the API, their developer manuals weren't done, but we had some .h files to work with and I managed to get a program compiled and running pretty quick. Then the OS went up a version and I started over. Then they abandoned the hardware.
I have to explain, the reason we wanted BeBoxen were that we produce live exhibits and its ability to play MANY streams of media at once was needed. We were stretching our Macintoshes thin. This sounded like a solution. I remember one person who was using it to develop an ambient noise generator for a zoo. I knew folks who were doing similiar light controlers... It was a MEDIA OS with a MEDIA Hardware...
We were notified at first that they would not be supporting the BeBox with new OS after a year... Since all their developers were at that point BeBox owners, they backed off on that. I still am technically a Be developer but hell if I trust them to do ANYTHING right...
Maybe I have been missing out, but with a choice between Linux and Mac OS X and BeOs is there even 100000 BeOS users who don't use one of the other OS'S for their primary work?
I don't think so.
That was a good call, comparing BeOS to NeXT. Other than the comparison mentioned in the topic, there's a bunch of others.
Let's see...
1) Both started by ex-Applers.
2) Both designed to be legacy-free, "beautiful" OS's
3) Both started with their own hardware, with names referring to a hexahedral shape
4) Both OS's were considered for the job of being Apple's next OS. (NeXT won.)
5) And they both have the same goofy-looking
CaPS SeQUEnCE.
Hey, is BeOS is following in NeXT's footsteps, maybe Microsoft will buy up BeOS (though I'd suspect it more likely that say, Sony would for "PlayStation O") and make it into their next generation OS, though I have no idea what they could call it with their nomenclature. They'd probably call it Windows 40,000, and it could run on a PC, a handheld, or a Predator Annihilator Tank.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
Maybe his statements reveal an underlying strategy, a paradigm shift: Be recognizes that OSes are as passe as the PC and is pegging its hopes on the information (Internet) appliance trend.
Perhaps the OS itself, by itself, is now meaningless. Maybe it's becoming an application-specific, high tech commodity world out there?
If the OS is a commodity (which it is) then companies that peg their hopes on selling and licensing the OS itself are in financial danger (MSFT, anyone?). The fact that a Bazaar-produced OS competes at all, and well in certain areas (like the Internet), against a Cathedal-imparted one bodes ill for the latter. Soon there will be mass defection from the High Priestly order of the Cathedral and spontaneous, free, open gatherings will supplant it. Viva Reformation!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Apple's closed hardware is really taking away from their chances.
Every single time Be is in the news, some /. reader bitches about "It sucks that Apple's not releasing any specs for G? hardware," not taking into account the fact that Apple Computer Inc. has released a kernel as semi-free software. What better hardware documentation is there than the commented source code to a working official kernel?
Be shouldn't let it die like NeXT did.
It never died; it just got absorbed into Mac OS 10 (which doesn't deserve an X).
Will I retire or break 10K?
BeOS is suffering from the classic problem of there being no users because there are no applications, but there are no applications because there are no users.
BeOS is supposed to be *THE* digital media platform. But after being out for two years, there are *STILL* no professional quality digital audio + MIDI multitracking suites out there. Nothing. You're still stuck in Windows or Mac for these.
I've spoken with a few of the big music software companies and they've all pretty much said that they're unsure if they're porting their stuff to BeOS or not yet.
I for one would have a brand new BeOS machine if I could do true *PROFESSIONAL* digital audio on it.
Red Herring, December 1996
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Visit
Woohoo!! Then we can carry handguns to make our country a safer place!! And cultural differences will be put to the side for the better economic state of our united north american nation!! And suddenly, 30 million more people will have the unquestioned right to be arrogant!!
COUGH... sorry.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
30 years?
That's pretty impressive for an OS that has only been in development for less than a decade.
About the same amount of time that Be has been around, actually.
Perhaps you meant Unix instead?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
BeNews has just spoken to Be's Vice President of Marketing Lamar Potts, who was
interviewed by Computer Channel. "The Computer Channel reporter got it completely
wrong. I said nothing of BeOS development being halted, and we have no plans to do
so." A complete quote from Potts follows.
According to Potts,
"This is a drastic misinterpretation of my words. I said nothing to the
reporter about BeOS development being halted. I simply reiterated the
same thing Be has been saying for months, about our shift in focus to
Internet Appliances. Obviously, we need to continue BeOS
development. BeOS is the development platform for BeIA, as well as
our 'calling card.' Strong visibility for BeOS is strong visibility for Be
and BeIA. We've just completed a major launch of BeOS 5, we've
struck deals with Gobe and international BeOS distributors, and we've
just promoted Dave Johnson to BeOS Product Manager.
I'm puzzled by the reporter's misinterpretation of my words. The
reporter was young, but his English seemed fine, and the whole
interview is on tape. Our PR firm was also present, and can verify that I
said nothing of the sort. I can't in my wildest imagination figure out
where the reporter got this idea from what was said during the
interview. We didn't head down that path at all."
Find it at www.benews.com
Sigged!
Considering all the hoopla I see around here about "bad journalism" and "inflamatory posts" on /., I'm suprised noone has yet thanked emmett for actually calling up Be and asking about this article.
:)
Anyway, I'll be the first; rock on, emmett. Thanks for checking up on the story before posting it. I'm quite sure it eliminated the copious amounts of whining that would have otherwise resulted
As a follow-up to this observation, the reason Apple bought Next rather than buying Be was because of the enterprise capability--that was the market Gil "Human Prozac" Amelio wanted to try to capture. At the time a lot of people thought this was a stupid idea, and I'm still not convinced that Apple wouldn't have been better served by buying Be. (Of course, if they'd bought Be, they wouldn't have gotten Steve Jobs. Whether that's good or bad depends on one's point of view.)
Here's the official word on the BeNews story on dropping BeOS:
"Earlier today, a German website ran an article claiming that Be was
planning on halting BeOS development work. This is a mistaken
interpretation of our remarks on the subject. As we have stated publicly, Be
is continuing to develop and release new versions of BeOS, which serves as the
development environment for BeIA, our software platform for Internet
appliances. We have made no change to this strategy. We appreciate the
interest the Be community continues to show in BeOS."
------------
Dave Johnson
BeOS Product Manager
Be, Inc.
http://www.be.com
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BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Does anyone know when BeIA appliances will be sold? How will we be able to get them? What will the products be branded as?
Or are they already out? I've never seen one...
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
It was announced for the first quarter of 2000, but nothing ever happened... ;-(
I just wanted to say thanks to the folks as Slashdot. Too many times we've been quick to slam them for posting something that turned out to be rumor, so I wanted to step up and say that it's good to see the research and source checking happen before the article hits the homepage. Slashdot may indeed be growing up into a mature (and already quite powerful) news outlet, which we will be able to rely on for Stuff That Matters well into the oughts.
Right. And Apple has been shipping Sherlock and the System Profiler with their OS for about 2-3 years. An OS != the stuff that comes with it.
...Unless of course you want GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/WINE/blah/blah/blah...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff